Revamping Your Budgeting and Forecasting in Power BI with Acterys

Summary

In this edition, we will be covering the following items:

1. The mechanics of budgeting and forecasting in Power BI with Acterys

2. How Power BI can work as a centralized tool for planning

3. What your team’s budgeting and forecasting cycle can look like

Winning Teams Have Winning Processes – and the Flexibility to Adjust and Adapt

The value of using Power BI for budgeting and forecasting is that you can build solutions with “controlled flexibility.” Your team can use Power BI to implement its own processes and controls, while retaining the flexibility to make a streamlined tool and the ability to adjust and adapt as the team evolves.

1. Capture the Business Logic Behind Your Financial Modeling: Use Acterys to capture, in code, the drivers behind your financial modeling. This can include the volume and pricing that will be used to generate your revenue forecast. It can also include more complex items like payroll (HCM), CAPEX planning, demand planning, and more. Many teams often find that going through the process of formalizing these “mechanics” uncovers inconsistencies and areas for improvement that would not have been found otherwise.

2. Formalize Your Budgeting & Forecasting Cycle: Using Power BI, Power Automate, and Acterys, you can send automated kickoff emails to the appropriate stakeholders at the beginning of the budgeting or forecasting cycle. Build in controls and automated approval flows for senior management. Automatically lock approved budgets/forecasts from editing to have a stable source of truth to compare actuals vs. budgets vs. forecasts. Build robust (but streamlined) controls into your tooling to give the teams and your business partners a straightforward planning solution.

3. Formalize Your Variance Analysis and Generate Actionable Insight: With Power BI serving as your central source of truth, you can now centralize variance analysis. Create in-depth analytics to show the variance between actuals, budget, and forecast. Most importantly, use the tool to help answer the most important question behind any variance: “Why?” This will empower your team to “tighten up” future forecasting/budgeting cycles and to serve as a true business partner to help drive operational improvements within the organization.

4. Adjust and Improve at Your Own Discretion: While Power BI and Acterys give your team the control needed to implement governance and process, they also give you the flexibility to adjust and iterate as you gain experience, identify best practices, and learn what works best for your organization. Set aside time for feedback, iteration, and process improvement at regular intervals. Establishing a line of communication and a cadence of reviews will help your organization get in the habit of balancing execution with continuous improvement.

What the Planning and Reporting Cycles Can Look Like in Power BI

With self-service planning and reporting tools, your team is free to imagine, and create, its own destiny. You can design processes, business logic, and analytics to suit your unique needs—and adjust the tooling as your organization evolves.

1. Centralized Tooling for Budgeting and Forecasting: Teams from across the organization login to the same Power BI dashboard to enter their budgets and forecasts. Each team is restricted to viewing and modifying only their own data. Business logic is built with the right balance of standardization and uniqueness across the organization. Once submitted and approved, the data is locked from editing, to ensure the integrity of analytics.

2. Synchronized, Orchestrated Planning Cycles: Business teams receive automated notifications and reminders to enter their budgets/forecasts. Approvals are baked into the process. The organization can create a streamlined, “orchestrated” planning process that minimizes disruption to business teams’ daily responsibilities.

3. Impactful Variance Analysis, Focused on the “Why”: Centralized analytics within Power BI allow teams to immediately identify variances in performance, but also to dive deeper into the data to uncover the drivers and root causes of issues across the organization. Senior leadership is empowered with centralized, intuitive tooling to support decision-making.

4. Continuous Improvement Baked into the Culture: Teams feel empowered to have a say in the process, look for ways to get better, and serve their stakeholders more effectively. Finance and business partners have a shared sense of ownership over the processes and outcomes they are responsible for.

Changing Tooling and Processes Is Inseparable from the “People Factor”

As you envision your organization’s transformation and adoption of best-in-class tooling, you cannot forget the human side of digital transformation. Every process, application, and tool will be used by individuals who have to be invested in the success of the organization and who need to feel a sense of ownership over the process and their responsibilities within it. Making sure to balance the needs of different stakeholders and get buy-in from “champions” and business partners will be just as important to the success of your efforts as building high-quality reporting, analytics, and planning tools.

In the Next Newsletter

We will learn more about change management and how to successfully navigate the human factor of any digital transformation project, large or small.